City Gallery City Gallery

Past event

WOULD YOU LOOK AT WHAT GOES UP.

25 July 2020

Update: We are excited to announce that we plan to bring Elisabeth Pointon’s aerial banner to you this weekend. Keep your eyes on the sky, Sat 25 Jul at 12.30pm. Keep an eye on our social media accounts and our website for updates!


What Goes Up. features banners and documentation from Elisabeth Pointon’s 2019 trilogy of aerial-banner projects (which included flying banners over Auckland's One Tree Hill and Auckland Art Fair). On Sunday 21 June 2020, we’re taking one of Pointon’s banners to the sky. It will soar over Cuba Street and the CBD for approximately thirty minutes. Pointon's aerial banners were made in response to Plane Text, a public art project presented above the galleries and poolside parties of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2012. Of the fifteen artists who commissioned to devise aerial-banner texts for that project, all but three were men and only one was of colour. Discovering that it was reasonably affordable to hire a plane, Pointon garnered the support of the local art community to create her own versions and established a relationship with an Auckland-based banner-towing company. As an artist of South-Asian heritage, questions of voice and representation underly Pointon’s practice. Her take on Art Basel is a whimsical performance of inclusion.

This flyover is supported by Wellington City Council Public Art Fund, and AirBubble Aerial Advertising and Banner Towing.